ON THE TOWN:Over-under on shops makeover

There is more good news for Newport Beach residents as it was just announced that someone is going to make over the collection of shops along West Coast Highway near Dover Drive. Coming back from a weekend at Crystal Cove two weeks ago, where we were lucky enough to have gotten a reservation, we remarked once again on the storefronts, particularly the corner of Dover and West Coast Highway, where for a time, tenants and leases were changing as often as the Angels’ lineup. Then there was the bad news. It looks like the developers are planning underground parking.

Newport Councilman Todd Ridgeway expressed a sentiment that no doubt occurred to every Costa Mesa resident (and a few Newporters), that is his concern about the planned underground parking.

The sentiment can be summed up in two words: Triangle Square.

Triangle Square opened with a Ralphs supermarket on the lowest level, which was accessible by car by driving underground.

Ralphs was followed after a time by a Whole Foods Market. For the past few years, the bottom retail location has been empty. I am convinced that part of the reason that both stores failed to reach their potential (is there a better reason for closing a store?) is that potential customers did not like driving underground.

I believe a lot of people don’t like to go into underground parking lots. Most of that concern, for me anyway, is because we are in earthquake country.

It’s not rational, I know, because the chances of a major earthquake striking at the very moment we are in an underground parking lot or store are so small that it probably beats winning the Lottery.

The other challenge facing the new shopping center is the traffic on the highway. I am on that stretch of road regularly, and even though the speed limit falls to 35 mph once you cross Dover and head toward the Balboa Bay Club, it is still a speedway for at least another quarter mile.

Entering and leaving the shopping center could be a challenge.

I don’t mean to be the shopping center’s wet blanket. But I believe that Bel Mare, as it will be called, will be an improvement over the shops that now occupy the site — shops that look like the retail version of the El Morro trailers.

So thank you to the developers for investing our community, and here’s a promise from one earthquake scaredy-cat that he will visit the new center and give it a fair shake.

Michael G. Glover is a brave guy. He is a former four-term Kansas state legislator who kept trying to get marijuana legalized.

Yes, you read it correctly: He wanted a state in which there are still “dry” counties to OK pot.

Glover has not been smoking it. He’s just sick and tired of the failed marijuana policies of the U. S. government. Those policies, as Glover would argue, have cost billions and failed to significantly reduce the amount of weed coming into the country.

No argument from me on that point. And if I could wave a magic wand, I’d make pot legal and alcohol illegal because alcohol is a far more dangerous substance.

But I can’t wave a magic wand, and I do not want another legal drug on the market. We have enough of those. What we need is a stronger society for our children so they are not inclined to smoke pot in the first place.

Glover is challenging Chuck DeVore for the 70th Assembly District seat. Yes, that’s the same DeVore who sponsored the recent hemp-farming bill that is awaiting the governor’s signature.

Hemp is not pot, and the governor should sign DeVore’s bill today.

Other than that, I wish Glover well. It has been a long time since anyone threw such a curve ball into an election.